


Ergo

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, Drinking, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Resolved Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:00:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29882190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: A reflection on semantics and the state of things.  (The state of things is "drunk".)
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 8
Kudos: 198





	Ergo

**Author's Note:**

> What do you mean this isn't the official epilogue of Conqueror of Shamballa? I don't know what you're talking about.
> 
> Just dashing all sorts of little things off to try to make the loud void quieter this week, idk idk idk. Enjoy! ♥

“Hey,” Ed says, with the paltry remains of his intellect. “Do you ever think…”

“No,” Roy says, because Roy is a bastard. He _is_. The deepest chambers of Ed’s heart always protest otherwise—always dredge up evidence of how much he cares, how much he does, how much he dreams of—but Ed has to hold on tight to that title. A Roy who was not a bastard could have anyone he wanted. A Roy who was not a bastard wouldn’t have to settle for…

Well, for Saturday nights in this creaky little townhouse, with the wind buffeting the windowpanes and whistling through the attic while they lie on the couch. Ed’s been draped over Roy’s lap for the past half-hour that they’ve spent sampling some of the whiskeys that Roy was ‘saving’. He always just shrugs when Ed says _Saving for what?_

Evasive. On purpose. Ergo, bastard.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “I noticed. You ever think—just—where we would’ve… where we might’ve been? If Al’n I hadn’t… if it hadn’t… worked. If the blood hadn’t been enough. If we’d just… never made it back.”

Roy makes obsidian look uninteresting and ivory look cheap. He’s convinced that the patch and what’s beneath it make him less—less gorgeous; less whole. So he’s an idiot on top of the confirmed bastard thing.

That probably makes Ed doubly an idiot for loving him so damn much anyway.

“I try,” Roy says, “to think about that as little as humanly possible.”

Ed has moved on to thinking about volcanic glass, which is just _about_ the coolest thing that it’s possible to be thinking about while he lets the last of this whiskey drop-kick him in the back of the throat. “’M not little. Asshole.”

Roy strokes his hair back. “Of course not.” Ed extends his left hand towards the gleaming bottle on the table, and Roy leans over him to push it out of his reach. “I’m cutting you off.”

“ _Bastard_ ,” Ed says. It’s starting to sound redundant now—it’s starting to border on nonsensical; the letters slip around in Ed’s mind. He imagines typewriter text, and then his own handwriting, and then Roy’s; and then he pictures it scrawled out in the sky. “Ruining my life.”

Roy leans down far enough to kiss his forehead this time. “I play to my strengths.”

Ed had every intention of pushing him away, but the automail goes rogue a lot lately. Tonight it’s decided to curl itself into Roy’s shirtfront. In the interests of honesty, he feels compelled to offer, _very_ quietly: “You’re not really. Ruining it. You’re not.”

“So I hope,” Roy says, quietly, and he’s shifting off of the couch so that Ed has to roll sideways; and then he’s standing, and then he’s taking both of Ed’s hands to pull him upright. “I don’t think I can begin to tell you how much I hope that… Sometimes I wish that I had the slightest right to praying.”

When the world stops teetering, Ed looks down at Roy’s hands around his. He squeezes. Experimentally. “They never listen anyway.”

“I know,” Roy says. He starts towing Ed out of the room, towards the stairs. The stairs are even creakier than the rest of this place. “But you did. You came back to me.”

Normally, Ed makes a point of correcting him. _Not back to_ you _, Mustang—back to Amestris; back to our family; back to alchemy; back to a world that we make sense in._

_(And to you, and to you, and to you.)_

But tonight… well. Roy’s been less of a bastard than he could have been. Ed’s got a pretty rigorous rubric. Maybe, just this once, he can let it slide.

“Didn’t have much choice,” he says as they clomp on up the stairs. He’s having a little trouble figuring out where he’s putting his left foot; his brain’s still swimming. “I knew you’d never finish all that whiskey on your own. Had to come and help.”

Roy smiles at him, and that part is bastardly in the extreme. How can he possibly think he’s not a looker anymore? How can he not _know_ that he can still take you out at the fucking knees?

“You’re too good to me,” Roy says, and that one doesn’t sound much like a joke.


End file.
